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1 Bradford's Mass., vol. ii. p. 133. 25
" Williamson, vol. ii. p. 450.
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On the 20th of March, Thomaston was incorporated. This made the thirty-seventh town in the State. Its Indian name was Georgeekeag. Thomaston received its name from a brave officer of Massachusetts, Major-Gen. John Thomas, who had died the preceding May, in the service of his country. The fort in this place gave it celebrity above any other town in the valley of the St. George. In 1750 the fort was so crowded, in consequence of the Indian war, that about twenty families built two rows of block-houses, one hundred rods from the fort, and surrounded them with palisades ten feet high. All the men served alternately as guards and sentinels, ever ready to muster to repel an attack.
The British sent four war-vessels, to batter down Machias. They anchored about a mile below the junction of East and West Machias Rivers. They burned two dwelling-houses, and several other buildings. The barges then, in a dead calm, towed two of the vessels, a brig and a sloop, to the mouth of Middle River, about half a mile below the falls. The garrison, aided by the Indians, opened a deadly fire from each shore upon the barges, and drove the sailors from their boats on board the brig. The current swept her ashore. The men were driven by the bullets, from the deck into the hold. The rising tide soon floated the brig ; but the fire from the north shore was kept up so briskly that the men could not work her, and she soon grounded again.
It was indeed a wonderful scene which was then and there witnessed. There were fifty Passamaquoddy Indians engaged in the attack upon the vessels. It was congenial work for them. They could run along the shore, hide behind the trees, stumps, and logs, and take deliberate aim at their foes, without en- dangering themselves. Every man in the place, capable of bearing arms, rushed to the conflict. The Indians kept up an incessant, shrill war-whoop. The white people re-echoed the shout. These yells, from foes who were scarcely visible, echoing through the forest, led the English to suppose that the shores were lined with thousands of savages.
A breeze arose. Aided by this the two vessels effected a retreat to the other two vessels which were at anchor. The
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officers, surprised at the vigor of the resistance which they had encountered, after the delay of a few days abandoned the enter- prise. The Indians merited and received the gratitude of the Americans for their faithful adherence to their cause. Had they listened to the appeals of the English, they might easily, with their aid, have destroyed all the eastern settlements.1
In the year 1777, Burgoyne's surrender caused nine thousand of our enemies to lay down their arms.2 There was no longer any fear of the invasion of Maine from Canada. During the progress of the war Maine gained much celebrity from the hardy and skilled seamen she furnished our infant navy. In addition to their almost perfect seamanship, they were generally young men of good character and habits. Commodore Samuel Tucker, one of the bravest of the brave, who conveyed in a Continental frigate Hon. John Adams as American envoy to France, was a native of Bristol, Me. Hon. Mr. Sprague, in his eulogy of Adams and Jefferson, relates the following well-authenticated anecdote of an event which occurred on the passage : -
On the 14th of March, a vessel hove in sight. Capt. Tucker soon came up with it, and found it to be an armed British cruiser. After a hotly contested battle it was captured. In the midst of the tumult and the carnage, Capt. Tucker, much to his surprise, saw his illustrious passenger on deck, musket in hand, fighting like a common sailor. The captain, who was a very powerful man, rushed up to Mr. Adams, and in excited accents exclaimed, " You here, sir! You have no business here, sir ! I am commanded to carry you safely to Europe ; and, God help- ing me, I will do it." So saying, he seized Mr. Adams in his arms, and carried him, as though he were a child, down into the cabin.3
In the year 1778, two new towns were incorporated. The first was Coxhall, subsequently Lyman, named probably in honor of Theodore Lyman of Boston. A few settlers had
1 "Great credit is due to the Indians for their rigid adherence to our cause ; although, at times, the commissary's department was destitute of sufficient pro- visions and clothing for thein."-Judge Jones.
2 The British force surrendered was 6,280; Burgoyne's other losses amounted to 2,933. Total, 9,213. - Holmes's American Annals, vol. ii. p. 301.
ยช Life of John Adams. Lives of The Presidents, p. 74.
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penetrated the wilderness at this place, about ten years before. The other town was Gray, so named from one of its proprietors. Nearly thirty years before, an attempt had been made to establish a settlement here ; but, during the French war, the plantation had been laid waste. In all these new towns the inhabitants were ardent friends of liberty. The Tories resided in the more opulent towns, where officers, under the British Government, exerted a powerful influence over the aristocratic circles of society. This year a law was passed confiscating the estates of three hundred and ten of the Tories, who had resided in the State, but who had many of them fled, taking refuge on board the British fleet. They generally deemed it impossible that the Americans could resist the power of Great Britain, and doubted not that they would soon be returned in triumph to their homes.
The battle of Monmouth, on the 28th of June, 1778, gave new hopes to the Americans; which hopes received another impulse from the arrival of a French fleet of twelve ships of the line and six frigates, to aid them in their struggle against their gigantic foe. The territory of Massachusetts, which included Maine, was at this time divided into three districts, the North- ern, Middle, and Southern. The counties of York, Cumberland, and Lincoln received the distinctive name of the "District of Maine." Timothy Langdon, Esq., an eminent lawyer of Wis- casset, was appointed judge.
In 1779 Pittston was incorporated. It was the fortieth town in the State, and the last which was incorporated by the General Court under the royal charter. A settlement had been com- menced there about eighteen years before. In May of this year, the British sent a fleet of seven or eight war-ships, to plunder and burn the settlements on the Penobscot. Nearly a thousand men embarked in this fleet at Halifax. They landed on the 12th, at Biguyduce,1 now Castine, and commenced building a strong fort that they might command the whole of the valley. The detested Mowatt was assigned to this station, with three sloops of war.
This movement created much alarm. The General Court of
1 This name, taken from a French gentleman, Major Biguyduce, who formerly resided there, was pronounced Bageduce.
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Massachusetts, with the approval of the Colonial Government, promptly fitted out for the capture of the port, a fleet of nineteen armed vessels and twenty-four transports. The fleet carried three hundred and forty-four guns, and was amply supplied with material of war. The command of the expedition was intrusted to Commodore Saltonstall, of New Haven, Conn. He was un- doubtedly a patriot and a brave man ; but he was sadly deficient in military skill. The enterprise proved a total failure, followed by an awful loss of life and property. It is very clear that the fort could have been taken had proper measures been adopted. Gens. Lovell and Wadsworth, who commanded the land force, conducted with great bravery, but they were not supported by the commodore. The assaults which were made were so feeble. that the garrison was enabled to strengthen its works, and to send to Halifax for aid.
On the 14th of August, a formidable British fleet of seven vessels entered the harbor. The result was that the American fleet was annihilated. Some of the vessels were captured by the English. Some were run ashore and burned. Nearly all were abandoned. The sailors and marines commenced a retreat through the vast wilderness, to the Kennebec. After great suf- fering, most of them reached the forts on the river. This utter defeat was extremely humiliating. The General Court, after a thorough investigation of the affair, pronounced sentence in- capacitating Commodore Saltonstall from ever after holding a commission in the service of the State, and honorably acquitting Gens. Lovell and Wadsworth.
The British now seemed to be securely established at the mouth of the Penobscot. The American settlers, on the banks and the island, were exposed to constant insults and injuries. After the repulse of the fleet, the British sent a party up the river to Bucksport, where they burned five dwelling-houses and all the out-buildings, and returned to the fort with the plunder. The people of the struggling little settlement in Belfast were plundered, and so outrageously abused that they were forced to abandon their homes and all their possessions, and in destitution and tears to seek refuge where they could. It seems difficult to account for the fact that British officers, who had wives and
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children, and who were generally gentlemen by birth, could be guilty of such inhumanity as to burn the log cabins of poor settlers, rob them of their little all, and drive out mothers, babes, and maidens to perish of hunger and exposure in the wilderness.
There was a poor man by the name of John Gilky, living upon an island. He was absent, and only his wife and children remained in the lonely cabin. A boat's crew of Englishmen landed. They plundered his house, and shot his five cows, though the mother, with tears and on her knees, implored them to spare her at least one for her children. These men, sent on this diabolical mission from an English ship, then retired, leaving the family in the depths of woe.
An English soldier fled from one of these ships. It is proba- ble that he was in favor of American liberty, and did not like the employment he was in. Faint and hungry he came to the house of Shubael Williams. The kind-hearted American, poor as he was, gave him a seat by his cabin-fire, and fed him. Wil- liams was seized by the British, and was charged with encoura- ging the man to desert. These English officers, who called themselves civilized and even Christian men, sentenced the poor man to receive five hundred lashes at the whipping-post.1 The writer regrets to record such deeds, but history is unfaithful to its trust if atrocious acts are not held up to public execration. Many Tories from Massachusetts fled to this region, to be under the protection of the English. All the eastern towns were now in great peril from a foe more to be dreaded than the Indians. The General Court sent three hundred nien to Falmouth, two hundred to Camden, and a hundred to Machias. The command of this eastern department was assigned to Gen. Wadsworth. His headquarters were at Thomaston.
The island of Mount Desert suffered severely from the rav- ages of the enemy. Boats' crews were often landing, shooting the cattle, and plundering the helpless inhabitants. Bath, the forty-first town in the State, was incorporated in the year 1781. It had previously been considered the second parish of George-
1 Williamson's History of Maine, vol. ii. p. 430.
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town. The first settlement here was in about the year 1670. The land was purchased of two sagamores, Elderunkin and Nenement.
Bath has become one of the most important commercial towns in Maine. It is admirably located on the western bank of Ken- nebec River, twelve miles from its mouth. The largest ships can float in its secure harbor, which is never impeded by ice. Capt. George Weymouth, as we have mentioned in the early part of this history, ascended the river to this point, in the sum- mer of 1605. He landed, with a boat's crew, and wrote, -
" We passed over very good ground, pleasant and fertile, and fit for pas- ture, having but little wood, and that oak, like that standing in our pastures in England, good and great, fit timber for any use. There were also some small birch, hazel, and brake, which could easily be cleared away, and made good arable land." 1
Ship-building has been its principal business. In the year 1847 it received a city charter, and in 1854 became the shire- town of Sagadahoe County.
During the vicissitudes of the war, Gen. Wadsworth was residing in a secluded habitation, on the banks of a small rill in Thomaston. His family consisted of Mrs. Wadsworth, an infant daughter, a son five years of age, and a young lady, Miss Fenno, a friend of Mrs. Wadsworth. Six soldiers were on guard. The English at Biguyduce heard of his defenceless condition, and sent a party of twenty-five men, under Lieut. Stockton, to cap- ture him. It was the 18th of February. The ground was covered with snow, and it was intensely cold.
At midnight the party approached the house. The sentinel, outside at the door, seeing such a band approach, rushed into the kitchen, which was used as a guard-room. The English dis- charged a volley of bullets through the open door. The house was immediately surrounded, the windows dashed in, and vol- leys discharged into the sleeping apartments of the general and of Miss Fenno. The general, armed with a brace of pistols, a fusee, and a blunderbuss, fought with great intrepidity, driving the foe from before his window and from the door. The attack
1 Maine Historical Collection, vol. v. Address by John MeKeen, Esq.
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was renewed through the entry. The general defended him- self with a bayonet until a bullet passed through his arm, rendering him helpless. He then surrendered. He would have been shot down in cold blood had not an officer pushed aside the gun of the assassin.
Awful was the spectacle then witnessed. The general and nearly all of his guard were wounded, and their persons and the floors were stained with blood. One poor creature, writh- ing in anguish from a dreadful wound, begged them to shoot him and thus end his torture. The windows and the doors were dashed in, and the house was on fire. The thickly flying bul- lets fortunately struck neither of the females nor the children. The general had sprung from his bed, and was in his night- dress. The bullet had struck his elbow, and the arm, from which the blood was gushing, hung helpless at his side; and he announced a surrender. An English officer came into his room with a lighted candle, and said, " You have defended yourself bravely. But we must be in haste. We will help you put on your clothes."
The excruciating pain of his wound rendered it impossible for him to wear his coat. It was given to a soldier to carry, and a blanket was spread over his shoulders to protect him from the piercing wintry blast. His wife begged permission to exam- ine and dress the wound. This was not permitted. A handker- chief was bound around the arm to stay, in some degree, the rapid gushing of the blood.
Several of the British soldiers were wounded. Two of them were placed upon the general's horse, which was brought from the barn, while he, faint from loss of blood, was compelled to walk four miles, through the snow, to the vessel from which the party had landed. After toiling along for a mile, his strength entirely gave out. As one of the wounded British soldiers who was riding was apparently dying, they left him at a house, and the general was placed upon the horse behind the other soldier. When they reached the shore, off which the vessel, which was an English privateer, lay at anchor, the cap- tain approached him, and exclaimed ferociously, " You damned rebel, go and help them launch the boat, or I will run you through with my sword."
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Gen. Wadsworth replied, "I am a prisoner, wounded and helpless. You may treat me as you please."
Lieut. Stockton came promptly to the rescue, and, addressing the brutal fellow, said, " Your conduct shall be reported to your superiors. The prisoner is a gentleman. He has made a brave defence. He is entitled to be treated honorably."
The general was granted a berth in the cabin, and such other comforts as circumstances would allow. The next day the ves- sel reached Biguyduce. The place was thronged with British officers, sailors, soldiers, and Tories, who had taken refuge there. They crowded the shore to see the captives landed, and assailed them with shouts of rage and contempt.
Protected from mob violence by a guard, they were marched half a mile to the fort. A surgeon dressed the general's wounds, and he was treated with great humanity. Gen. Campbell, who commanded at the fort, expressed his high admiration of the heroic defence Gen. Wadsworth had made against such fearful odds. " I have heard," he said, " of the treatment you received from the captain of the privateer, and I shall compel him to make to you a suitable apology."
A comfortable room was assigned him, he breakfasted and dined at the table of the commandant, and books were furnished him to relieve the weariness of his imprisonment. There was an encampment of American soldiers at Camden, on the western side of Penobscot Bay, about twenty-one miles from Biguyduce. Lieut. Stockton allowed his prisoner to send to that station, which was but four miles from the place where he had been captured, a letter to his wife, and another to the governor of Massachusetts, by a flag of truce.
Gen. Wadsworth felt extreme anxiety in reference to his family. He had been so hurried away that he knew not their fate. At the close of a fortnight he learned that they were safe. His little son, buried in the bed-clothes, had escaped the bullets which had been flying so thickly through the chamber. The wounds of the general proved to be very severe. It was five weeks before he could move about. He wished for the customary permission of going abroad on his parole; but this privilege was denied him.
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After close confinement of two months, his wife and Miss Fenno were allowed to make him a short visit. He then ascer- tained that he was to be sent to England, to be tried as a rebel. The British authorities were treating the American prisoners of war with the utmost brutality. If sent to London, there was but slight chance of his escaping the gibbet. About this time Major Benjamin Burton was captured, and was imprisoned in the same room with Gen. Wadsworth. He was a very brave man, who had been attached to a fortress in the present town of Cushing. His intrepidity had attracted the attention of the English, and excited their malevolence. It was soon evident that they were both to be transported to England.
Goaded by this peril, they effected their escape through toils ,, and sufferings, scarcely exceeded by the world-renowned adven- tures of Baron Trenck. They were in a grated room within the fort. The walls of the fort were twenty feet high, sur- rounded by a ditch. Sentinels were stationed upon the walls, and on the outside of the portals which opened from the for- tress. Guards were also stationed at the door of their room. Outside of the ditch there was another set of soldiers, who were patrolling through the night. The fort was on a peninsula, and a picket-guard was placed at the isthmus to prevent any escape to the mainland. Under these circumstances it would seem that escape were impossible.
With a penknife and a gimlet, they, in three weeks' labor, cut an aperture through the pine-board ceiling of their room. Every cut was concealed by paste made of bread moistened in their mouths. On the 18th of June the long wished for night of darkness, thunder, and tempest came. The midnight gale, with flooding rain, drove all to seek shelter. At twelve o'clock they removed the panel which they had cut out. By the aid of a chair they crept into an entry above. The darkness was like that of Egypt. They groped their way along, and soon became hopelessly separated. Wadsworth succeeded in reach- ing the top of the wall by an oblique path used by the soldiers. Fastening his blanket to a picket, he let himself down until he dropped into the ditch. Cautiously creeping between the sentry boxes, he reached the open field.
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The gale still swept the plains, and the rain fell in floods. He groped his way through rocks and stumps and brush, till he reached an old abandoned guard-house on the shore of the back cove. This was the rendezvous where the two friends had agreed to meet. He waited half an hour ; but as Major Burton did not appear he sadly gave him up as lost. It was low water. He waded across the cove, which was a mile in width, the water often reaching nearly to his armpits. Thence he pressed on another mile, through a road which he had formerly caused to be cut for the removal of cannon.
The sun was now rising. He was still on the eastern banks of the Penobscot, about eight miles above the fort. It was a beautiful June morning. The smiles of God seemed to be rest- ing upon a world which its wicked inhabitants were filling with misery. At that moment the general, to his inexpressible joy, saw his companion approaching. The meeting was rapturous.
They found a boat upon the shore. With it they crossed the broad river, and landed on the western bank, just below Orphan Island. They had but just landed, when a barge of the enemy was seen in the distance, evidently in pursuit. Gen. Wads- worth had a small pocket compass. Guided by this they directed their course in a south-west direction, and after three days of toil and suffering reached the habitations of American settlers. They obtained horses, and were soon with their friends in Thomaston. 1
1 Gen. Peleg Wadsworth was born in Duxbury, Mass., May 6, 1748, and graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1769. Immediately after the battle of Lexington he raised a company of minute-men, and was second in command of the expedition against Biguyduce. He came to Falmouth in 1784, and in 1785-6 built the first brick house in the town, still standing, and in which the poet Longfellow passed his youth. In 1792 he was elected the first representative to Congress from the Cumberland district. He died in Hiram, Me., in 1829, at the age of eighty-one. He was the maternal grand- father of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet, his daughter, Zilpah, having married Stephen Longfellow, the poet's father, in 1804.
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RUSSELL RICHARDSON.SA
VIEW OF PORTLAND, ME
CHAPTER XXII.
THE WAR OF 1812, AND THE SEPARATION.
Expenses of the War-The Question of Separation- Increase of Town! -- Counties Formed - Bowdoin College chartered - The Farmington Schools - Lewiston - Augusta and its Institutions - Waterville - Gardiner - The War of 1812 - Causes of the War-Incidents of the Conflict - Increase of Population and Towns -The Penobscot Valley ravaged - General Alarm - Scenes in Castine - Peace - The "Ohio Fever" -The Separation - Maine an Independent State.
T THROUGH all this dreadful conflict with England, the In- dians of Maine remained firm in their alliance with the Americans. The coasts were ravaged by English cruisers. This led many settlers to push farther back into the wilderness. Four years after the capture of Burgoyne, the British army, under Lord Cornwallis, on the 27th of October, 1781, surrendered at Yorktown, to the combined force of France and America. The British were vanquished. Their cause was hopeless. A treaty of peace was signed at Paris, on the 3d of September, 1783. All hostilities ceased, and the British armies were withdrawn from our shores. England, in this senseless war, sacrificed one hun- dred thousand lives of her own subjects and mercenaries, and added a sum amounting to six hundred million dollars to her national debt. America gained her independence at an expense of the lives of fifty thousand of her patriotic citizens, and a debt of forty-five million dollars ; and this was in addition to indi- vidual losses and expenditures which can never be adequately estimated. 1
The Indians had won the kindly feelings of all. But they
1 Williamson, vol. ii. p. 504 ; Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ii. p. 402.
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were no longer freeholders of the soil. They were allowed restricted territory, and all other regions were in the possession of the State. The District of Maine embraced, it was estimated, thirty million acres. An immense tide of emigration began to flow in upon these rich lands. A day of prosperity had dawned. In 1784 Machias, which had been deemed the most noted plan- tation in Maine, was incorporated. It took its name from a river passing through it, which the Indians called Mechises. The Tories of Maine generally retired across the Bay of Fundy, to the English province of New Brunswick.
In March, 1785, James Bowdoin was elected governor of Massachusetts. Three new towns were incorporated this year, - Shapleigh, Parsonsfield, and Standish. The last was named in honor of the renowned Capt. Miles Standish. The question arose respecting the separation of the District of Maine from the State of Massachusetts. But the inhabitants of Maine were so widely scattered, that it was impossible to obtain an expression of public opinion. Conventions were held, addresses issued, and various measures adopted, to form and to ascertain the views of the people.
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